Seasonality of herpes zoster and herpes zoster ophthalmicus.

Background: Herpes zoster (HZ) and herpes zoster ophthalmicus (HZO) are common and debilitating diseases. There is no consensus in the literature whether HZ and HZO exhibit seasonal patterns.

Objectives: To determine whether HZ and HZO are seasonal.

Current recommendations on the selection of measures for well-being.

Measures of well-being have proliferated over the past decades. Very little guidance has been available as to which measures to use in what contexts. This paper provides a series of recommendations, based on the present state of knowledge and the existing measures available, of what measures might be preferred in which contexts.

Antibiotic hypersensitivity and adverse reactions: management and implications in clinical practice.

Background: Studies have shown the discrepancy between self-reported antibiotic allergies and true allergies. Inaccurate reporting of antibiotic hypersensitivities can limit treatment options and result in use of more expensive antibiotics and contribute to resistance.

Methods: This retrospective cohort chart review obtained data on 16,515 patients after obtaining IRB approval.

Frailty in Elderly Patients Undergoing Cardiac Surgery Increases Hospital Stay and 12-Month Readmission Rate.

Background: Cardiac surgery risk scoring systems predict operative mortality but not outcomes related to preoperative frailty. The aim of this study was to assess frailty in a cohort of older cardiac surgery patients as a predictor of postoperative outcomes.

Methods: Prospective data was collected on patients 65 years of age and older undergoing cardiac surgery between September 2015 and October 2016 at Dunedin Hospital.

The association between actor/partner optimism and cognitive functioning among older couples.

Objective: Higher optimism has been linked with health, well-being, and cognitive functioning. Spouses also play an important role on people's health, especially in older adulthood. Yet, whether a spouse's optimism is associated with an individual's cognitive functioning is understudied.

Healthy in a crummy world: Implications of primal world beliefs for health psychology.

Aaron Beck's insight-that beliefs about one's self, future, and environment shape behavior-had major implications for health psychology research and practice. Yet, beliefs about one's environment have remained relatively understudied. A recent comprehensive empirically-driven effort has led to the identification of 26 primal world beliefs, or primals, (e.

The Relation of Optimism to Relative Telomere Length in Older Men and Women.

Objective: Mounting evidence suggests that higher optimism is associated with reduced risk of age-related morbidities and premature mortality. However, possible biological mechanisms underlying these associations remain understudied. One hypothesized mechanism is a slower rate of cellular aging, which in turn delays age-related declines in health.

Sense of Purpose in Life and Cardiovascular Disease: Underlying Mechanisms and Future Directions.

Purpose Of Review: In this review, we synthesize recent research that has reported associations of a higher sense of purpose in life with reduced risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD), and then explore mechanisms that might underlie these associations.

Recent Findings: Accumulating observational and experimental evidence suggests that having a higher sense of purpose might influence CVD risk through three pathways: (1) enhancement of other psychological and social resources that buffer against the cardiotoxic effects of overwhelming stress; (2) indirect effects through health behaviors; and (3) direct effects on biological pathways. A sense of purpose in life is emerging as an independent risk factor for incident CVD.

Incidence Rate of Herpes Zoster Ophthalmicus: A Retrospective Cohort Study from 1994 through 2018.

Purpose: To analyze the incidence rate (IR) of herpes zoster ophthalmicus (HZO) and differences by age, gender, race, and region from 1994 through 2018.

Design: Retrospective, observational cohort study.

Participants: Patients with a new International Classification of Diseases, Ninth or Tenth Edition, codes for herpes zoster (HZ) and HZO from January 1, 1994, through December 31, 2018, in the OptumLabs Data Warehouse (OptumLabs, Cambridge, MA).

The effects of early life adversity on growth, maturation, and steroid hormones in male and female rats.

Early life adversity is a risk factor for psychiatric disorders, yet the mechanisms by which adversity increases this risk are still being delineated. Here, we used a limited bedding and nesting (LBN) manipulation in rats that models a low resource environment to examine effects on growth, developmental milestones, and endocrine endpoints. In LBN, dams and pups, from pups' postnatal days 2-9, are exposed to an environment where dams lack proper materials to build a nest.

Deep Neural Networks Improve Radiologists' Performance in Breast Cancer Screening.

We present a deep convolutional neural network for breast cancer screening exam classification, trained, and evaluated on over 200000 exams (over 1000000 images). Our network achieves an AUC of 0.895 in predicting the presence of cancer in the breast, when tested on the screening population.

Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy is Not Associated with Adverse Perioperative Outcomes after Robot-Assisted Radical Cystectomy: A Case for Increased Use from the IRCC.

Purpose: We sought to determine the trend of neoadjuvant chemotherapy use for nonmetastatic muscle invasive urothelial bladder cancer and whether it is associated with adverse perioperative morbidity after robot-assisted radical cystectomy.

Materials And Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the IRCC (International Robotic Cystectomy Consortium) database between 2006 and 2017. After excluding patients with nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer the patients were divided into 2 groups, including those who did vs did not receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Social Media as an Emerging Data Resource for Epidemiologic Research: Characteristics of Regular and Nonregular Social Media Users in Nurses' Health Study II.

With advances in natural language processing and machine learning, researchers are leveraging social media as a low-cost, low-burden method for measuring various psychosocial factors. However, it is unclear whether information derived from social media is generalizable to broader populations, especially middle-aged and older adults. Using data on women aged 53-70 years from Nurses' Health Study II (2017-2018; n = 49,045), we assessed differences in sociodemographic characteristics, health conditions, behaviors, and psychosocial factors between regular and nonregular users of Facebook (Facebook, Inc.

Effect of Corticosteroid-Sparing Treatment With Mycophenolate Mofetil vs Methotrexate on Inflammation in Patients With Uveitis: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Methotrexate and mycophenolate mofetil are commonly used immunomodulatory therapies for achieving corticosteroid-sparing control of noninfectious uveitis, but there is uncertainty about which drug is more effective.

Objective: To compare the effect of methotrexate and mycophenolate for achieving corticosteroid-sparing control of noninfectious intermediate uveitis, posterior uveitis, and panuveitis.

Design, Setting, And Participants: The First-line Antimetabolites as Steroid-sparing Treatment (FAST) uveitis trial screened 265 adults with noninfectious uveitis requiring corticosteroid-sparing immunosuppressive therapy from 9 referral eye centers in India, the United States, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico between August 22, 2013, and August 16, 2017.

Optimism is associated with exceptional longevity in 2 epidemiologic cohorts of men and women.

Most research on exceptional longevity has investigated biomedical factors associated with survival, but recent work suggests nonbiological factors are also important. Thus, we tested whether higher optimism was associated with longer life span and greater likelihood of exceptional longevity. Data are from 2 cohorts, women from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and men from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study (NAS), with follow-up of 10 y (2004 to 2014) and 30 y (1986 to 2016), respectively.

City Patterns of Screening Mammography Uptake and Disparity across the United States.

Background Although previous studies have focused on rural disparities in the use of screening mammography, city-level use throughout the United States has not been well evaluated even though more than 30 million women live in the 500 largest cities. Purpose To evaluate disparities in the city-level use of screening mammography and to identify factors that have an impact on screening utilization. Materials and Methods This retrospective study used data from large publicly available databases, the American Community Survey and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 500 Cities Project, which includes screening mammography utilization data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

Diagnostic Performance of Prostate Multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging in African-American Men.

Objective: To compare test performance of multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) for detection of prostate cancer (PCa) in African-American men (AAM) and white men (WM) using the Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System in unmatched groups as well as a cohort matched for clinical factors.

Methods: We examined our database of men who underwent prostate mpMRI prior to biopsy between October 2014 and June 2017 (n = 601; 60 AAM, 541 WM). Test performance was defined using Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System classification 4 or 5 considered test positive and Gleason grade group 2 or greater from any biopsy core considered outcome positive.

Treatment of Diabetic Macular Edema.

Purpose Of Review: Diabetes mellitus is a global epidemic which is growing in prevalence, and diabetic macular edema (DME) is a leading cause of visual impairment among patients affected by this disease. Our objective is to review current and upcoming therapeutic approaches to DME.

Recent Findings: Once considered the gold standard in treatment of DME, focal/grid laser is now reserved mostly for non-center-involving DME, while anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) therapy has become the first-line treatment.

Optimism is not associated with two indicators of DNA methylation aging.

Evidence indicates associations between higher optimism and reduced risk of age-related conditions and premature mortality. This suggests optimism is a positive health asset, but research identifying potential biological mechanisms underlying these associations remains limited. One potential pathway is slower cellular aging, which may delay age-related deterioration in health.

Preliminary study: Breast cancers can be well seen on 3T breast MRI with a half-dose of gadobutrol.

Background: Dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) breast MRI is highly sensitive for breast cancer and requires gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCA)s, which have potential safety concerns.

Purpose: Test whether breast cancers imaged by 3T DCE breast MRI with 0.05 mmol/kg of gadobutrol are detectable.

A single-nucleus RNA-sequencing pipeline to decipher the molecular anatomy and pathophysiology of human kidneys.

Defining cellular and molecular identities within the kidney is necessary to understand its organization and function in health and disease. Here we demonstrate a reproducible method with minimal artifacts for single-nucleus Droplet-based RNA sequencing (snDrop-Seq) that we use to resolve thirty distinct cell populations in human adult kidney. We define molecular transition states along more than ten nephron segments spanning two major kidney regions.

Prospective associations of happiness and optimism with lifestyle over up to two decades.

Greater levels of psychological well-being are associated with reduced disease and mortality risk, and lifestyle habits may be potential mechanisms underlying these relationships. Prospective studies show that positive psychological factors enhance the likelihood of adopting specific health behaviors; yet, whether they promote the adoption of multiple healthy behaviors, which can have a multiplicative effect on disease and mortality risk compared to individual behaviors, is unknown. We investigated whether happiness and optimism were related to a healthy lifestyle (characterized by multiple health behaviors) over 10-22 years of follow-up; we also explored bidirectional associations, assessing if a healthy lifestyle at baseline was related to greater likelihood of experiencing higher happiness and optimism over time.

Ten-Year Oncologic Outcomes Following Robot-Assisted Radical Cystectomy: Results from the International Robotic Cystectomy Consortium.

Purpose: Radical cystectomy is the gold standard for nonmetastatic muscle invasive bladder cancer and for refractory nonmuscle invasive disease. Compared to open radical cystectomy, robot-assisted radical cystectomy has been shown to provide comparable early oncologic outcomes and improved perioperative outcomes. However, there is a paucity of data on long-term oncologic outcomes and concerns about a higher incidence of local recurrence after robot-assisted radical cystectomy.